Drawing inspiration from the Psalms, Bishop Herro Blair on Wednesday evening delivered an impassioned plea to Christians in Kingston to diligently and faithfully play their role towards the positive transformation of the city.

Bishop Blair was one of the featured speakers at the Kingston Keswick Convention, which began on Sunday. The evening sessions of the convention are being convened at the Boulevard Baptist Church, St Andrew. The convention ends tomorrow evening

Annual gathering

The Kingston Keswick Convention is an annual gathering of various evangelical churches in Kingston for a week of spiritual renewal.

Keswick is a town in England where Christians began in 1875 to gather annually for spiritual renewal, aided by the teaching and exposition of the Bible. The Keswick idea has spread to many countries.

Jamaica hosts three major Keswick gatherings, one in Kingston, Montego Bay and Mandeville.

The Kingston Keswick Convention has been going on annually for the last 49 years.

Bishop Blair, who is also the political ombudsman and senior pastor at Faith Cathedral Deliverance Evangelistic Centre on Waltham Park Road, in Kingston, based much of his challenge on Psalm 85.

He entitled his sermon 'Revive us again' and sought to show that it had a strong relationship with the theme of the conference 'You Can Change the City'.

According to Blair: "We cannot change the city without a national moral rebirth."

He said Jamaica had become "conscienceless" and too many persons operated on the basis of the immoral maxim of "see and blind, hear and deaf".

He decried the extent to which Jamaicans oppress their fellow citizens and otherwise act unjustly.

The nation, he continued, needs national restoration and restitution. He spoke of injustices dating back to gun-related criminal acts of the 1970s for which there has been no attempt at atonement.

Attending the wounded

As a result, he said, many persons are walking around psychologically and emotionally wounded. He said there needs to be a context where persons who have been guilty of grievous atrocities can confess their wrongdoings and express regret and where possible seek to make restitution.

Meantime, he called on the Christian community to make their presence felt by attending to the wounded. Regrettably, he said, the Church has not done a good enough job at ministering to such needs.

"We need to get personally and integrally involved," said the bishop as he challenged church folk not to distance themselves from the downtrodden, poor and hurting people who live in inner-city communities.

Bishop Blair, who is also chairman of the Peace Management Initiative, said "we have to go to the inner-city areas to take the city". In this regard, he decried the "competition" among churches. Instead, he said, "We must join hands together to take the city."

The pastor said transformation of the city depends on the people living in it repenting of their sins - Christians and non-Christians alike.

Clean up our act

"If we never repent, they will never repent. If we repent, great things will happen in the city. We have to clean up our act before we can take the city," Blair said.

He stressed, "Rhetoric won't change a nation. It is when God find a ready people that God will change the city."

He urged the Christians as they pursue transformation to do so by constantly giving praise to God.

"For God inhabits the praise of his people," he said.

Bishop Herro Blair talks with residents of Trench Town during a walk through the community by the Peace Management Initiative last year. - File

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